Posted by Joshua on Monday, November 30th, 2009

GENEVA — In a vote that displayed a widespread anxiety about Islam and undermined the country’s reputation for religious tolerance, the Swiss on Sunday overwhelmingly imposed a national ban on the construction of minarets, the prayer towers of mosques, in a referendum drawn up by the far right and opposed by the government.

Walter Wobmann, president of the committee “Yes for a Ban on Minarets,” gave a thumbs-up in Egerkingen, Switzerland, on Sunday.
Marcel Bieri/Keystone, via Associated Press

The referendum, which passed with a clear majority of 57.5 percent of the voters and in 22 of Switzerland’s 26 cantons, was a victory for the right. The vote against was 42.5 percent. Because the ban gained a majority of votes and passed in a majority of the cantons, it will be added to the Constitution.

The Swiss Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but the rightist Swiss People’s Party, or S.V.P., and a small religious party had proposed inserting a single sentence banning the construction of minarets, leading to the referendum.

The Swiss government said it would respect the vote and sought to reassure the Muslim population — mostly immigrants from other parts of Europe, like Kosovo and Turkey — that the minaret ban was “not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture.”

Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, the justice minister, said the result “reflects fears among the population of Islamic fundamentalist tendencies.”

While such concerns “have to be taken seriously,” she said in a statement, “The Federal Council takes the view that a ban on the construction of new minarets is not a feasible means of countering extremist tendencies.”

The government must now draft a supporting law on the ban, a process that could take at least a year and could put Switzerland in breach of international conventions on human rights.

Of 150 mosques or prayer rooms in Switzerland, only 4 have minarets, and only 2 more minarets are planned. None conduct the call to prayer. There are about 400,000 Muslims in a population of some 7.5 million people. Close to 90 percent of Muslims in Switzerland are from Kosovo and Turkey, and most do not adhere to the codes of dress and conduct associated with conservative Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, said Manon Schick, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International in Switzerland.

“Most painful for us is not the minaret ban, but the symbol sent by this vote,” said Farhad Afshar, who runs the Coordination of Islamic Organizations in Switzerland. “Muslims do not feel accepted as a religious community.”…

In a recent televised debate, Ulrich Schlüer, a member of Parliament from the S.V.P., said minarets were a symbol of “the political will to take power” and establish Shariah, or religious law…..

“… Several nations had hoped to stall the invasion of Iraq to allow U.N. weapons inspectors more time to search for evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction – the key justification for the war. No such weapons were ever found. Yet Bush’s inner circle cared little about what international allies thought and refused to halt plans to invade in March 2003, Greenstock said. He said even Blair was unable to persuade Bush, winning only a brief hiatus of two weeks…”

Books translated in “hostile countries” will soon be allowed to be sold in Israel, after the Ministerial Committee for Legislation decided yesterday to support a bill overturning a World War II-era law aimed at blocking information from enemy states.

This will allow the Arabic translations of best-selling children’s books like “Harry Potter” and “Pinocchio,” as well as Arabic versions of prominent Israeli authors, to be sold here.

Until now, Arabic translations of popular children’s books and works by authors like Amos Oz, Yoram Kaniuk and Eshkol Nevo were not available in Israel, because they were printed in hostile countries like Syria and Lebanon. This was because a 1939 British-Mandate era law prohibited literature from being imported from enemy states.

Given the relatively low readership of Arabic-language books in Israel, and the resulting low returns on translations, almost none have been produced in Israel.

The present bill, initiated by MKs Yuli Tamir, Yariv Levin and Zeev Bielski, aims to make literature in Arabic more readily available.

Tamir (Labor) said yesterday, “This would be an important law, one that ensures the freedom of literature and culture of all citizens. Every citizen is entitled to read literature in his mother tongue. This law would end the absence of children’s books and belles-lettres for Arabic readers.”

Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) — The Islamic Hamas movement banned girls last month from riding behind men on motor scooters and forbade women from dancing at the opening of a folk museum. Girls in some schools must wear Islamic headscarves and cloaks. Signs of Hamas’s creeping Islamization are everywhere in Gaza, the Mediterranean coastal enclave that Hamas has run by itself since 2007. Gaza is already politically divided from the West Bank, the Palestinian territory administered by the secular Fatah movement. “Ruling by itself, Hamas can stamp its ideas on everyone,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political science professor at Gaza’s al-Azhar University. “Islamizing society has always been part of Hamas strategy.”

Shlomo Sand, author of Invention of the Jewish People, and Avi Shlaim, author of Israel and Palestine, in conversation about their new books at a packed Frontline Club yesterday. Chaired by Jacqueline Rose, author of The Last Resistance….[Watch youtube]

Why the Swiss minarets are such an important issue? is it because the conversation around the issue reflects the wider and growing sentiment of Islamophobia in Europe?

On the other hand, we’re not exactly in position to preach to the Swiss. When Saudi Arabia allows the construction of Churches, and when religious and non-religious minorities in majority-Muslim countries receive similar rights to those of Muslims in the West; only then we’ll be in a position to tell Swiss how intolerant they are.

I’m having a big problem to understand the first half of this post or the important information it is giving us as ‘readers’ or what kind of discussion it is planning to get?
An explanation for this post would be highly appreciated because for me what happened in Switzerland is an example of the western democracy in its finest and I don’t know how that is related in any way to Syria Comment as a blog or to Syria or any Arab country who doesn’t even have any kind of democracy in any form.
I know in advance that the Arab and Islamic public will go crazy about what the ‘infidel’ Swiss chose for their country, forgetting that the Sudanese government legalizing lashing its women for wearing pants, or Hamas forcing it’s population of wearing headscarf even the non-Muslim and attacking Palestinian Christians in Gaza, or in Iraq killing people according to their religion, bombing mosques and churches and forcing people to immigrate, or in Egypt where no church is allowed to be built or renovated without a presidential decree and treating their Coptic Christian as 2nd class citizens, or in Syria coming up with a personal status law treating people according to what they believe, or in Saudi where non-Muslims are not allowed to visit Mecca and no Church, Synagogue or temple is allowed to build and where it is legal to execute humans for discussing other religion than Islam….those are just few examples of our backwardness, our close mildness and our discrimination about anything and anybody who is different, so shouldn’t we judge ourselves first and be ashamed of what we have inside our countries?
We are the biggest hypocrites in all human history.

The Swiss are right to control the building of minarets. Mosques are not touched by this law. The only purpose of the minarets is the call for prayers. Minarets neighbours would be wakened up everyday by call for prayers 5 times a day, often cacophonic as they are in many moslem countries, since the calls have been “modernized “and come from low quality tape recordings. Stopping that would be impossible. Since Islam is using technology, there are more modern ways to call for prayers.. cell phone service or others instead of bothering the 96% who are not keen to hear it. Is there anything in the Koran saying that mosque should have minarets?
If one wants to argue about the churches bells. Church bells are used once a week, during daytime, at reasonable hours, and are not tape recordings.

Dear JAD, I knew you would find a way to make the addition of the Swiss minaret story on SC relevant to Syria!! Thanks.

The West prides itself on treating all individuals and groups equally before the law. This tenet of enlightenment culture is perhaps the signature aspect of what it means to be “Western.” To see a country, like Switzerland, contravene it in such an obvious way is disheartening.

I might add, as a counter to Why-Discuss’ argument, that the mosques in Switzerland do not broadcast the call to prayer. There is no reason for banning the building of minarets, save bloody mindedness. I presume mosque architects will simply name their minarets something else, such as “steeples,” and continue to build them.

As for Middle Eastern countries, I believe that promoting the notion of equality before the law is a desirable goal. There has been important movement on this front since the beginning of the Tanzimat reforms in the 19th century and particularly since the creation of national states, but there is a long way to go, as the comments already made above make clear.

I agree with Jad to the necessity of reminding the other side of their hypocrisy and there is a solution for this. Equality should not be only between people in one state, in this case equality should be broadened to encompass the glob. The Muslims in the whole world have a duty to promote equality on this scale. If Saudi Arabia (as representative of Islam origin) does not allow for other religions to build or practice their religion why the Swiss government should allow building Minarets. Swiss government should not prevented the Muslims from building Minarets, it should have placed a condition on them to ask them to talk to the Saudis to allow building Christian churches to grant them this permit. Or the Swiss government should have raised the subject in the United Nations and asked other countries to make changes in their laws to allow for reciprocity with its citizen needs. Does anyone know how much monies come out of Saudi Arabia for building Mosques around the world? Any group planning to build a mosque usually will send a rep to his country where he came from and to the Saudi Arabia, and they usually get millions back.

Dear Dr. Landis,
I agree with what you wrote, my point wasn’t to legitimize what the Swiss chose, but my point was if we want to make this a big issue to discuss don’t we have in our country more important and seriously urgent issues we have to deal with before targeting others who are way more advance than us in human rights and democratic values, using religion as a base for attacking others wouldn’t make us better but the opposite of that it magnifies our hypocrisy that is my point.

SOSOSTA,
Do you really want to go there and discuss how all the Muslim and the Arab countries except ‘Saudi’ as you wrote, fairly and equally treats their minorities? I don’t think so!

Majed,
We are not in anyway saying that what the Swiss chose is right or wrong what we are saying is that before we judge them and label them as close minded or hypocrites to the value they preach to us days and nights we need to look inward and try to learn from them, have a dialog to clear the misunderstanding of us instead of the meaningless emotional reaction our world is coming to.
Beside, with the democratic system they’ve got believe me that they will have another referendum and that can easily be reverse in the same democratic system was put in, be assure of that.

Akbar,
Your example is not only hilarious it shows how ignorant you are, God bless you!

“I must of missed the punch-line;)”
BIG TIME!
Showing an old mosque doesn’t mean Israel is democratic, human rights obedient or tolerant toward Palestinians and Muslims, it shows it as another failure tribe in the region, it is no difference than me or anybody on here showing Damascus, Cairo,Beirut and even Tehran having a Synagogue and brag about our tolerance and good nature while those Synagogues where there before the Christianity and Islam came in?
Does that make us look better than our ugly discrimination truth? The answer for this question is NO, judging from your previous comment I doubt you will get this one either ;), beside the whole Swiss post wasn’t about Israel, give it a rest!
If I were you, I brag about the good news that Israel opening its libraries for Syrians and Lebanese books to get it, at least you deserve to brag about that for a while, not about some 200 years old Mosque built during the Ottoman era and you want to take advantage of its existence as prove of your Israel tolerance, that was a bad joke.

If I were you, I brag about the good news that Israel opening its libraries for Syrians and Lebanese books to get it, at least you deserve to brag about that for a while, not about some 200 years old Mosque built during the Ottoman era and you want to take advantage of its existence as prove of your Israel tolerance, that was a bad joke.

Moreover, I find it rather remarkable that Israel has protected the religious freedom of its Arab minority, considering the threats against Israel from the Moslem and Arab world from Israel’s inception to this very day.

Switzerland may need to learn tolerance from the Israelis, even though the Swiss have never been threatened by neighboring Middle Eastern regimes.

The Swiss referendum was a clear slap in the face for the Muslim population and there is nothing more to it, it’s not about building codes or environmental acoustic hazards… But it’s cool that the folks here and put on a brave face and take the opportunity to reflect about religious freedoms in Arab countries. What bothered me the most about the coverage of the Swiss referendum was the sketchy information provided: what was the text of the referendum and what would the proposed legislation look like now that it has been accepted? I’m 100% sure this law will not be passed because there is no way to enact it in a non-racially discriminatory way. It’s just a declaration of intent towards the Muslim population and we should expect to see more and more of this throughout the continent. The Jews have been through this drill before, now it’s the Muslims’ turn. Israel should expect to have a field day as the right consolidates its grip over Europe and nationalism rebounds. That’s why the right in Israel thinks that it can just ride out the storm and criticism of Israel would wane over time. Perhaps they’re correct about this. Imagine right wing governments all over Europe plus Palin as president in the US? Israel should not pawn its bulldozers quite yet…

Akbar, Jad,

This mosque close to the border between Jaffa and Tel Aviv has been under attack for a long time now, at best, Israel just let it decay over time, and it disallowed regular service and reconstruction of it. It is many times cited as a sign of the hypocrisy of the left in Israel, how the mosque in Ein Hud, which became the trendy “lefty” artistic colony of Ein Hod, use the old mosque there as a restaurant. The mosque in Majdal (which became Ashkelon) uses the mosque there as a museum for the city’s history which surprisingly tells the story of the kicking-out of the remaining Arabs out of the city in the early 50’s as-is. There are dozens if not hundreds of mosques that have been destroyed or that as used as barns, restaurants or museums, in the areas that were cleansed of Palestinians.

On the other hand, in areas that have remained Muslim new mosques were built without any restrictions that I’m aware of. In fact, they have been too successful, to the extent that for example the main church in Nazareth is now totally surrounded by mosques. They also use the call for prayer with huge speakers and it is sometimes an inconvenience. That seems to be the main goal behind it 🙂

This mosque close to the border between Jaffa and Tel Aviv has been under attack for a long time now, at best, Israel just let it decay over time, and it disallowed regular service and reconstruction of it. It is many times cited as a sign of the hypocrisy of the left in Israel, how the mosque in Ein Hud, which became the trendy “lefty” artistic colony of Ein Hod, use the old mosque there as a restaurant. The mosque in Majdal (which became Ashkelon) uses the mosque there as a museum for the city’s history which surprisingly tells the story of the kicking-out of the remaining Arabs out of the city in the early 50’s as-is. There are dozens if not hundreds of mosques that have been destroyed or that as used as barns, restaurants or museums, in the areas that were cleansed of Palestinians.

On the other hand, in areas that have remained Muslim new mosques were built without any restrictions that I’m aware of. In fact, they have been too successful, to the extent that for example the main church in Nazareth is now totally surrounded by mosques. They also use the call for prayer with huge speakers and it is sometimes an inconvenience. That seems to be the main goal behind it.

Yossi,

I think you’re wrong. When we were in Israel last year or so, we stayed very close to the mosque. Our relatives were at the big hotel behind it (the David Intercontinental). We passed the mosque everyday. It is gated and well-kept, where we frequently saw the gardner working, sprucing-up the beautiful garden and the exterior. The mosque (exterior) looks to be in excellent condition and is well tended to. It’s been there since 1812, despite all the wars and “racism”.

Contrary to what the link your provided said, the Mosque is called Hassan Beck, after its builder, and has been constructed in 1917. During the 48 war its minaret tower was used to snipe at Jewish passersby. After the war, the entire neighborhood, Manshiye, was destroyed except for the mosque and a residential building which today, ironically, serves as the IZL museum. After long years of neglect the minaret of the mosque has collapsed in the early eighties and whether to allow reconstruction was a hot topic in Tel Aviv until then mayor Shlomo Lahat decided to authorize reconstruction. The mosque was renovated in 2001, and the minaret was rebuilt to twice its original height. Now it’s in excellent shape.

The mosque has been a flash point for Arab-Jewish relationships with Jews attacking the mosque a few times over the last decade.

Thanks for the clarification. Yes, the picture clearly shows the mosque I passed by every day: the Hassan Bek Mosque.

During the 48 war its minaret tower was used to snipe at Jewish passersby.

And it’s still standing?

The anti-muslim graffiti is unfortunate. The anti-Jewish and pro-Nazi graffiti is unfortunate too. With the amount of violence this part of the world has seen over the past century, it is amazing to me that Israeli Jews and Arabs speak at all. But they do. Could the situation be better? Of course. But I think Israeli Jews and Arabs are making steady progress despite the terror that Israel faces every day.

I didn’t know this patch of the TA beach was considered “Jaffa”. Perhaps. You bascially have to walk another mile to get to Jaffa.

Let’s change the subject, I saw this article today:

The Shoe Thrower

Anyone here ever see someone throw a shoe at an Arab/Muslim leader and live to tell about it? Anyone throw a shoe at Saddam, Qaddafi, Mubarak, King Abdullah, nejad, Nasrallah? Please forward links.